


i want control, i want a perfect soul

by spacefilledeyes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anorexia, Anorexia Nervosa, Anorexic Lance, Depressed Keith (Voltron), Eating Disorders, Keith has major depressive disorder, M/M, Mental Hospital AU, Mental Hospitals, Pidge has OCD, Sick Lance, Slow Burn, hospital au, hunk has anxiety, lance (voltron) centric, unhealthy eating habits
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-05-04 09:13:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14589765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacefilledeyes/pseuds/spacefilledeyes
Summary: Maybe if things had gone a little different, Lance wouldn’t be in this position: sitting in a mental hospital, coloring in an outline of a lion pride, and talking about his “feelings”. But things hadn’t gone a little different, so now he had to get out.—Anorexia is a disease and Lance knows this. Lance has seen the statistics, the warnings, the side effects. He still doesn’t want the help being shoved in his face; he doesn’t think he’s sick enough yet to need it. So when his hospital roommate, Keith, offers to help get him released, Lance agrees.Maybe he doesn’t realize it, but Lance is running out of time. Every day he is not recovering, he is dying. There is no middle option. He might have succeeded in fooling his mind into thinking he’s okay, but he can’t fool his body.





	1. numbers; it all comes down to numbers

**Author's Note:**

> TW: eating disorders, anorexia, internalized fatphobia 
> 
> I used a mixture of my own knowledge and google translate for the Spanish, please correct me if something is wrong! 
> 
> PLEASE, do not read if this will trigger you.

Looking back, it was easy to see how she caught Lance in her trap, entangling him in her web. It had been all too easy for her. 

—

It started when he was nine. His oldest sibling, his sister Veronica, was watching over him while his other siblings were out playing soccer with the neighborhood kids and their mom was at work. 

“Hermano, estás engordando,” Verónica had said, looking Lance over. The boy had been eating some of the leftover meal from the night before as a snack. 

Lance stopped when he fully processed what she said. “Verónica, eres antipática, no me gusta,” he had replied, but he looked down at his belly nonetheless. 

While his sister, sixteen, in high school, and participating in dieting like all of her friends, was slim and looked like a model, Lance looked at his own chub and felt her words echo around his brain. His own stomach was just suffering from leftover baby fat and a bloated stomach from recently eating, but Lance saw a fat boy. He saw the slight rolls and he didn’t like it. 

“Lo siento, hermana, tal vez necesito perder peso,” Lance said slowly, “tal vez soy gordo.” 

Verónica looked at her baby brother, surprised to see the distress on his face. “Ay, hermano, no estés triste.” 

Lance looked up at her with big blue eyes, and she felt a guilty tug at her heart. She switched to English to explain better, since it was her primary language and she only spoke Spanish at home. “It’s not a bad thing to be overweight. I just worry. You know Mamá has diabetes, you know I just don’t want you to suffer like she does. I love you, hermano, and your stomach chub.” 

She poked at Lance’s stomach, causing him to squeal and try to wriggle away. Verónica considered her job completed. 

She had no idea just how much those words she had uttered insensitively would stick with him. 

—

Lance is eleven when his brother, Marco, joins the football team at his high school. It was no secret that Lance looked up to Marco, even though the other boy hated the attention from a middle schooler when he was trying to be cool. 

“Marco!” Lance had bounded up to his brother one evening, as Marco arrived home from his practice, “Do you think when I’m in high school I can be on the team with you?” 

Lance’s shining eyes grew dull when Marco scowled at him over the kitchen counter and replied, “No, hermano. You will never be a part of the football team because the football team doesn’t accept niños gordos.” 

Lance frowned, and looked at his pudgy fingers. 

“Marco José Antonio McClain!” His mother screeched at him from her place in front of the stove. “Apologize right now, or you will be doing all of Lance’s chores for a month!” 

Lance’s mamá watched as Marco glared and pouted for a few seconds before muttering out a half-hearted apology. But it was too late, the damage was done. 

—

Lance was fourteen when he bought his first magazine. When he brought it home with him, and Luis teased him for buying a stupid magazine, he said that he brought it because of his favorite celebrity doing an interview inside. 

That wasn’t the truth. 

Really, he had seen it while waiting in line at a convenience store to buy a soda. His mamá had given him five dollars to spend. He had been casually scanning the checkout area when it had caught his eye. 

LOSE THAT STUBBORN WEIGHT FAST! 

It was right there on the cover. Suddenly Lance’s eyes were glued to the magazine. He just couldn’t help himself when he picked it up and flipped to the recommended page. 

Some people say that diets are hard, but not with this tried-and-true method! Read on as Mariah Debbie, a world-renowned weight loss coach, lets us in on some of her top-secret tips and tricks! 

Lance was going to read more, shamelessly just standing there in the middle of the aisle way, when he heard the cashier clear his throat. 

“Uhm, kid? You wanna buy somethin’ or not?” He asked. Lance glanced from him to the people waiting in line. 

“Go ahead, ma’am,” Lance gestured to the woman waiting behind him. He runs to the back of the store and switches out his drink for a diet. When he arrives back at the cashier, the woman is gone and he’s next in line. 

He plunks the two items - the magazine and the diet soda - onto the conveyor belt and grins at the guy behind the register. The cashier just scowls and seems to be judging him. 

Lance walked out of the store and headed home with his mamá. When he got home and dinner was over, he went back to the article.

He spent all night reading through the pages, committing them to memory. When he grew bored of that, he stared at the male models and wished that in some distant future, he could be like them. 

—

His first diet came when he is fifteen. 

Lance was sitting in the cafeteria of their high school with Hunk, his best friend. The Samoan boy offered Lance one of his mom’s homemade cookies, and the Cuban just shook his head in refusal. 

At Hunk’s curious gaze, Lance admitted, “I’ve gone on a diet.” 

Hunk looked him over, as if analyzing if Lance needed a diet or not. It was sort of annoying for Lance- how could Hunk know if Lance was fat enough for a diet or not? 

After a minute of silence, Hunk nodded, and said, “As long as you’re dieting to be healthy, Lance. That’s all you need to be. Healthy.” 

Lance knew it was meant to steer him away from harmful thoughts, but really Hunk’s words had the opposite effect. 

Hunk thinks you’re fat enough to need a diet. If you were skinny he would have said so instead of agreeing that you needed to diet. 

It was the first time that he heard her voice in his head. 

—

Lance was sixteen when he realized maybe he needed a bit of help. 

He had been on some blogging website. It had a large dieting community, and Lance had gotten more and more invested the more time he spent on his computer, scrolling through posts. He even had a blog of his own, where he posted his favorite “thinspo”. It was a term he picked up from the website; it basically meant people that were as thin as you wanted to be. 

It was a bit addicting for him to just scroll through the tags and his own page. 

#weight-loss, #dieting, #ana. 

He had grown used to seeing that tag in his reblogs. He did some researching (thank you, urban dictionary), and found out that ‘ana’ was short for anorexia, like the disease. 

Sure, he posted pictures with that tag sometimes, but he told himself it was just for exposure purposes only. He wasn’t anorexic. 

Plus, anorexic people were thin. 

Lance was not thin. 

Ever since he was fifteen and went on a diet for the first time, he had been pretty obsessed with how he looked. He took up skincare and makeup, both things that he enjoyed, but really, he just wanted his face to be up to par when he finally got the body he wanted. 

So what if he noticed his skin was a little dry, and his lips were a little cracked? It didn’t mean anything. He was a teenager, his skin was fickle like that. 

Lance had started his diets at around 200 pounds. He couldn’t remember how much of that had been muscle - Lance used to be on the swim team during his freshman and sophomore years - and how much had been fat, but the more he tried to think back, the more he was sure it had all been fat. 

Lance had quit the swim team halfway through the season of his sophomore year. He reasoned with himself that he never was good enough to keep at it anyways, so it was a waste of time. He didn’t admit, even to himself, that the main reason he quit was so that his weight loss would come quicker. 

As he slowly got thinner and thinner, his situation got worse. He had to buy new clothes, because his old ones were simply too loose on his hips or shoulders, and that just motivated him to lose more. Lance noticed more of his hair falling out in the shower, but he reasoned it was due to all of the hair products he used getting rid of unhealthy hair. 

Hunk was worried about him. He had noticed the quick weight loss. 

Lance was 145 pounds when Hunk brought him into his bedroom one night while they were hanging out. The larger boy looked him over, just like he always does before saying something big, and asked, “Lance, what is going on?” 

Lance had been getting more paranoid the more weight he lost; he thought everyone was in the way of him finally being skinny. He had been pushing everyone away, slowly drifting, when he had been invited over to Hunk’s “to play video games”. Lance saw now what Hunk’s motives really were. 

“Nothing, buddy. Why would you think something’s up?” Lance asked with a grin on his face, mentally kicking himself. 

Hunk gave him an incredulous look and replied, “Lance, you’ve lost a ton of weight these last few months… we’re all worried.” 

“Who’s ‘we all’?” Lance asked suspiciously. 

“Me, your siblings, your mother, hell, even Mr. Smythe noticed something was up,” Hunk confessed, practically chewing on his nails. “Please, talk to me. No one wants you to suffer.” 

Lance realized he was scowling and quickly schooled his expression into another smile, “I’m not suffering, Hunk. I feel better than I ever had.” 

Hunk did not believe him. 

—

Lance made ‘ana buddies’: people who wanted to lose weight the same way he did and wanted a friend. They helped him to not binge, they helped him by sending him thinspo and messages about how he needed to lose weight to motivate him. He did the same for them in return. 

At this point, Lance accepted it. He had anorexia, but he didn’t ask for help. He didn’t want the help, despite his better judgment. 

You’ll recover when you’re skinny. You’re not skinny enough to recover yet, Ana’s voice in his head always reminded him when he thought of the possibility of recovery. 

And she was right, she always was. 

Lance took to skipping meals, saying he had homework to do or he wasn’t hungry or he was at Hunk’s place. He didn’t know if his mamá believed him, but she let him not eat, so that was good enough for him. 

He weighed in every morning before he did anything else. He stripped off his clothes and stood on the scale, waiting for the digital numbers to appear. 

Every time they did, it was bittersweet. He would lose half a pound, maybe a little more, and although he tried to celebrate his victories, Ana’s voice inside his head told him it wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be enough until he was skinny. 

Lance was at 125 pounds, and his BMI was 17.4, and he tried to feel happy about it. He wasn’t just skinny, he was underweight! His hip bones and ribcage poked out at him whenever he took his shirt off. 

But somehow, it still wasn’t enough for him, for Ana. She insisted, just a little more. Just a few more pounds, and then you can stop. 

He took to fasting for multiple days at a time. He knew it wasn’t healthy, but nothing else was working anymore. 

Lance became frustrated. When people offered him food, he would snap at them and refuse. When people wanted to hang out with him, he said no for fear that he would be forced to eat. He even avoided his family, because he knew that they were catching on and he didn’t want them to stop him when he was so, so, so close. 

He spent more and more time on his beloved websites. He looked at thinspo, read tips and tricks, posted about his goal weights, and compared his BMI to the BMIs of famous models. 

—

Lance was 5’11 and 118 pounds, seventeen years old, when it all came crashing down around him. 

He was walking home from school, since it helped him burn calories. Hunk was next to him, not willing to let him go alone at this state. 

Hunk could see the bumps of his spine protruding farther than they should have through Lance’s shirt. 

The larger boy became concerned when Lance stumbled a bit and had to stop walking to catch himself. 

“Lance! Are you okay?” Hunk had yelped, his hands immediately on his friend. 

Lance pushed him off immediately and stood up straight. “I’m fine, Hunk. I’m not as fragile as you think.” 

Hunk ignored the uneasy feeling in his stomach when he felt all of Lance’s bones under his hands. “Okay, if you say so.” 

“You’re not my mother, Hunk, so chill out-“ Lance said harshly, trying to move again, but black spots swarmed his vision and his empty stomach churned and his head pounded. 

He took one step, and felt the consciousness leave him, his body crumpling on the pavement of the sidewalk. 

“Lance!” 

—

Lance woke up in a hospital room. 

There was no mistaking it. The beeping of a heart monitor beside him, the thin sheets pulled up to his chest, the unfamiliar hospital gown, the feeding tube going down his throat. 

Wait- feeding tube?

No. 

His heart monitor sped up as he panicked, trying to remember what landed him here. 

Right, the walk home, the pavement coming up to meet his face. He must have passed out. 

It wasn’t the first time. Lance had passed out once before, in his bedroom, but he didn’t tell anyone about it. He reasoned with himself that it was just a fluke. 

Lance felt like gagging as he felt the tube, slithered down his throat to make a home in his stomach. 

‘How many calories are in this thing?’ Ana’s voice asked in his head. Lance panicked even more. 

A nurse came bustling into the room and gave Lance a stern look. “Don’t you try and pull out that feeding tube, now. Ain’t gonna work.” She started taking Lance’s vitals, messing about with equipment he had never seen before in his life. 

Eventually, she seemed satisfied, and walked out the door without another word. Lance listened to her footsteps fading down the hallway. 

He glanced at the tray beside his bed. There wasn’t any food on it, but his phone and wallet were placed there. He grabbed his phone and opened it up. 

Two days had passed since he fainted, and really, Lance wasn’t surprised. He had read stories just like his life right now, and they all said it took more than 24 hours to wake up. 

He was checking his blog when his door was slammed open. 

“Lance, hermanito!” Verónica cheered, and raced into the room. She was followed by his brothers, Marco and Luís, and his mamà. They all crowded his bedside, although none of them were little enough to sit on the bed with him. He was the youngest, after all. 

“What happened?” Lance asked innocently, trying to play dumb and see what his family knew.

“Mijo, you scared me to death. Hunk called and said he had called an ambulance for you, that you had passed out on the walk home from school. He was in hysterics, the poor boy.” His mamá took a deep breath, as if steeling herself, “Why would you do this, Lance? Why were you starving yourself?” 

Lance felt his cheeks turn red with shame. He shrugged helplessly. 

His mamá carried on, “I knew that there was something wrong, but I didn’t know…” At this point she broke into tears, and Verónica had to place her arms around her mother. 

Marco and Luís were the next to stand by his bedside. “Lance, you can’t do this anymore,” Marco insisted, with Luís nodding in agreement. 

“You’ll die, and then who will be the baby of the family? Me. You know I don’t want that,” Luís said, trying to come off nonchalant, but letting emotion seep through into his words. 

Marco took Lance’s hand in his own. “You’re so skinny now. You’re a bag of bones.” 

Lance laughed humorlessly, and replied, “That was kind of the point.” 

Marco slapped his arm, “We damn well know that.” 

Lance ignored the way Marco winced as he touched Lance’s arm, no doubt disgusted by what he’s become. 

The nurse from before pushed the door open, and gestured to someone on the other side of the door. She left, and a woman in a white coat replaced her. She brought one of the chairs from across the room up to Lance’s beside, opposite of all his family, and sat.

“I am Doctor Zara Abbott, and I’m the head doctor for your case. I’m just here to tell you about some things.” The woman - Doctor Abbott - said softly. 

It pissed Lance off a bit that she spoke so gently. He was not thin glass, ready to break at the slightest noise. But then again, everything was pissing Lance off a bit right now. The fact that he was in a hospital. 

The fact that he’ll never get the chance to be thin enough. 

Doctor Abbott cut off his thoughts. “Lance, you have a severe eating disorder. You’ve been diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Do you know what that is?” 

Lance nodded. 

The doctor gave him a sad smile, “That’s what I thought. Usually, when people are entered into recovery, they already have known they have an eating disorder for quite some time. Can you tell me when the disordered thoughts and actions started to occur? It’s alright if the actions and thoughts started at different times.” 

Lance scowled, intent on not answering Doctor Abbott at all. However, he made the mistake of glancing over to his family. 

His mamá stood there, looking devastated, and simply uttered, “Por favor, mijo.” 

Lance deflated. “I guess… the thoughts, they started when I was nine. That I was fat, that I needed to lose weight. I didn’t really do anything about it until I was fourteen or fifteen? Even then, it was just dieting.” 

Doctor Abbott scribbled on her clipboard as Lance spoke. 

“How many calories were you eating when you first started dieting? How about now?” She asked. 

“About 1,600 calories on my first diet.” Lance looked away from his siblings and mamá’s eyes, “I was eating 200 calories a day recently.” 

Lance heard a high-pitched hiccup, but refused to look over to see who it was. 

“That is why you passed out, by the way. Extreme dieting and physical activity is a dangerous mix. At such a low intake, you’re lucky you didn’t go into cardiac arrest.” Doctor Abbott informed him. “How many minutes a day do you regularly exercise?” 

“An hour.” Lance’s response was clipped, “Sometimes, if I had eaten too much, I would do an extra hour. But not often.” 

Lance hated that he had to just spill all of his secrets to a random stranger with a PhD. But he knew he had no choice, really, they might have to just keep him here until he answered all of the questions. At least after this he could be released and go home. 

“Do you ever overeat and then make yourself throw up?” Doctor Abbott asked calmly. 

“No.” It was true, even though he had gotten the urge to do so several times, Lance was too scared to ruin his teeth. 

“Do you believe that you are not skinny enough?” She was furiously writing something down and checking boxes. It made Lance anxious. 

“Yes.” 

“How would you feel about gaining weight?” 

“Horrible. If I gain weight, sometimes I’ll have panic attacks, and then I’ll fast.” Lance closed his eyes as he heard his mamá start crying into someone’s sleeve, probably Marco’s. 

“How long do you fast for?” She asked, flipping the page of the papers on her clipboard. 

“My longest time is five days even,” Lance said, and he couldn’t keep the note of pride out of his voice. 

“Do you get angry when others mention your eating habits or try to force you to eat more?” 

Lance thought back to Hunk. How he was always just trying to look over Lance, and how annoyed the Cuban had been. “I guess so.” 

Doctor Abbott asked a few more questions about Lance’s self image and eating habits, and Lance answered them robotically, still not making eye contact with anyone. 

Finally, the doctor stood up and shoved her chair back to its original position. “That concludes your mental health assessment. Someone will be coming shortly to do a physical exam as well.” 

Once she was gone, Lance tentatively looked over to his family. 

His mamá was trying so hard not to cry, but failing and weeping into Marco’s chest. Verónica was staring off into space, looking very out of it and shocked. Luís had his hands clenched at his sides, clearly angry at someone, probably Lance. 

Marco stepped a bit closer to Lance, and the shame and guilt came over him in a new wave. He had caused this- this pain in his own family. God, he was so stupid. 

Lance felt his eyes sting, the telltale sign that he was about to cry. He shoved his face into the pillow, but Marco grabbed him by the forearm and forcefully turned him over to see what was wrong. 

The tears spilling over was probably not what he expected, judging by the shocked look on his face. 

“I-I’m sorry for all of t-this, really,” He sniffled, “I just wanted to be sk-skinny.” 

—

Later that day, a different doctor came in and wordlessly examined his body while taking notes. He checked Lance’s height, weight, blood circulation, vital signs, even his nails and skin. Then he listened to Lance breathe and his heart beat for a good minute. 

When he was done, he left the room without a word. That was a little disconcerting. 

—

The next day, Lance’s family was there for visitation, and so was Hunk - he couldn’t have been there yesterday because apparently they had a huge test in Smythe’s class that Hunk wasn’t willing to skip - when Doctor Abbott entered the room. 

She looked quite serious, and she was holding the exact same clipboard she had been holding when she had done Lance’s mental assessment. Lance was beginning to think she was born with that clipboard in her hands. 

She didn’t drag a chair over this time; she instead just sat in it where it was, a safe distance away from the bed. 

“We have good news and bad news.” She said, sounding calm, but Lance’s nerves caught on fire anyways. 

Lance’s mamá looked into Doctor Abbott’s eyes and said, “Good news first.” 

“The good news is that we have found a residential hospital willing to take Lance’s place; it’s called Haven Recovery Center and he’ll be transferred there in 24 hours.” 

“What’s the bad news then?” Lance’s mamá asked, more quietly this time. 

“A team of doctors has decided that with the extreme state of Lance’s anorexia, he’ll be put in a long term residential program. In other words, he’ll be there a minimum of ninety days.” 

“What?” Lance burst out, “You can’t possibly be serious! Why do I have to stay for a whole ninety days?! This is ridiculous!” 

“Lance Alejandro McClain! Do not be rude. She is trying to help you. To get better,” Lance’s mamá snapped at him. 

Lance resorted to crossing his arms like a petulant child. He knew that his mamá would sign off on the papers without question, and that infuriated him. Couldn’t they see he didn’t want to go? 

Doctor Abbott continued talking, telling Lance’s mamá the logistics of the transfer and what it meant for her and Lance’s studies and a bunch of other things that Lance wasn’t paying attention to. 

When she finished her blabbering, she must have seen the pissed off look on Lance’s face, because she quickly exited with, “I think I’ll give you guys some alone time.” 

Hunk was the first one to speak after the door shut. “Don’t worry, Lance. I know that place, it isn’t eating disorder specific. I was in their temporary residential program for anxiety and paranoia, and it really helped.” 

“Yeah, but temporary residential is only for a few days and I bet anything the experience will be completely different,” Lance ground out. He wasn’t angry at Hunk, though. He was angry at himself for getting himself into this mess in the first place. He could be continuing on as he always did, but no, now he had to gain some gross weight and act like he was happy with himself- for ninety fucking days! 

“Hey, don’t worry about it. You need to recover, Lance. You can’t keep going on like this,” Hunk said, half-statement, half-plea. 

In the background, his siblings nodded along to Hunk’s words. Luís piped up, and said, “Lance, we all want you to be happy. But this is- your health is more important. Lo siento.” 

Lance huffed, still wound up at the whole idea. 

“The main doctor there is super hot, too,” Hunk said nonchalantly, but he immediately had Lance’s attention, “He’s a military vet, chiseled jawline, grey eyes, built like Zeus himself-“ 

“Alright! I get it, you want me to go. I guess I won’t put up a fight,” Lance sighed, but his cheeks were tinged pink from Hunk’s description of a doctor there. 

Lance’s mamá had the nerve to laugh.


	2. what doesn’t kill you makes you wish you were dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance encounters the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Haven, the inpatient facility he’s being forced to stay at: the patients, the nurses, just everything around him is like a whole new world. Mind you, a world he did not sign up for!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the true notes are at the end oh god but shoutout to my friend who tried to beta this!!! he read it and really tried his best, but when he tried to correct it, he misspelled “grammatically” and I’m not shaming him but I decided to self-edit from now on. still, he put in effort purely because he cares about me so shoutout to MATT!!!!! YOURE GREAT YOU AMAZING GAY!!! 
> 
> enjoy hoes

Visiting hours had been over for quite some time when the nurses came bursting into his room. It was the middle of the night, and Lance had been asleep, so their loud movements startled him awake. 

“Do you want to take your phone or leave it here for your parent to pick up?” One nurse asked him through the darkness. 

“Uhh… I want to keep it?” Lance said, as if it was the stupidest question he had ever been asked. Someone flipped on the lights and Lance winced instinctively. 

His phone was shoved into his hands, and he was lifted by several hands at once onto a portable gurney. As soon as he was set down, the gurney was moving through the hospital halls, which were thankfully mostly empty. He was pushed out some swinging doors into the slightly chilly night air, and suddenly he wished he was wearing more than a t-shirt. 

Lance took in the surroundings- having not been outside in days- and realized he was being wheeled towards an ambulance. Huh. 

The nurses and paramedics lifted his stretcher into the back of the ambulance and shut the doors behind him after two paramedics jumped in. Lance sat up as much as he could, but he noticed that there were straps constricting him. 

“Hey, buddy, could you undo these straps?” Lance asked, trying not to seem as annoyed as he was. 

The larger paramedic - both of them were presumably dudes, with well-built figures - glanced over him and responded dryly, “It’s protocol to have the straps. They’re a safety precaution.” 

The slightly smaller dude chose this moment to interrupt and say, “Yeah, sorry kid. This isn’t a limo ride.” 

Lance felt himself stiffen in offense to what the smaller dude said. Before he could really think it through, he blurted out, “Wow, really, I didn’t notice!” 

Both of the paramedics looked at him after he shut his mouth, unreadable expressions on their faces. Lance suddenly felt guilty. These dudes were just doing their job. And sure, Lance did not want to be here, in this situation, but he promised Hunk he wouldn’t resist. 

“Alright, kid, I like ya,” the taller man said, sitting down on one of the benches molded into the interior of the ambulance. Lance watched him and the other paramedic exchange glances. 

Lance didn’t say anything, and eventually the smaller one said, “We won’t pressure ya to talk. But we’ve made runs to Haven before, so maybe talking about whatever’s sending ya there will help ya out.” 

Lance furrowed his brows, debating. Sure, maybe it would “help”, but what was there to help? Lance was perfectly okay with where he was at before the hospital came into the equation. “I’d rather talk about something other than that, if we’re going to talk at all.” 

The two nodded at him, accepting his wishes. “It’s a short ride, only about fifteen minutes from the hospital, so we don’t have much time, but we’ll chat with ya. I’m Thace,” the bigger dude introduced himself. 

“I’m Ulaz. We’re husbands, so we get shifts pretty often together.” Lance glanced down at their hands to find matching wedding rings - cute. 

“I’m Lance. I don’t know if you knew that already or not…” Lance trailed off, shrugging. Usually, Lance loved to make new friends, even in the most inconvenient of places, but right now he just felt… forced, and exposed. Not fun feelings at all. 

Ulaz smiled at him gently, and Lance didn’t know whether to be annoyed or comforted. “Nice to meet ya. We’re from Scotland, so apologies for the accents.” 

Lance just waved it off, if a bit stiffly, and said, “I’m from Cuba. No judgment here.” 

The paramedics, Ulaz and Thace, were kind to him on the remaining ride to the hospital. They chatted about their lives in Scotland and the move over to America, and let Lance chime in when he wanted, though he stayed mostly quiet. With all of the anxiety building in his chest, he couldn’t really find the energy to hold a true conversation. Lance felt extremely nervous about leaving them when the ambulance stopped and the back doors of the vehicle were thrown open. 

Outside stood a woman in dark blue scrubs and another dude wearing the same scrubs as Ulaz and Thace, presumably the driver who had taken him here. Thace and the driver collaborated to move Lance’s stretcher out of the ambulance and into the building, but not before the woman entered a code into a keypad of some sort. Lance’s eyebrows raised at the security this place must have had. 

Lance asked Ulaz if he could have the straps undone now, and Ulaz shook his head no. Lance pouted, but no one made a move to help him out; instead, he was waiting in the room they first wheeled him into for a few minutes. It looked like a waiting room, complete with uncomfortable-looking chairs, an empty front desk, and magazines on top of small coffee tables. The woman in scrubs left with Thace, while Ulaz left to go back to the ambulance. 

When the woman returned, its with two other people in identical scrubs behind her, and together, they undid his straps. One of them wheeled the stretcher back outside, and the other two led him in through a door that also has a keypad lock on it. 

Lance looked around as he was lead through unfamiliar halls, feeling like a prisoner. Eventually, they came to a stop in front of enforced metal doors, and the first woman in scrubs held up her badge to some sort of scanner. It made a beep, and Lance was brought into what he assumed was a children’s wing. 

There were kids’ drawings on the walls and behind the front desk, and through the windows of the common rooms, he could see chairs and crayons and books. 

The woman went behind the front desk, opening up some drawers, and then held out her hand. When Lance just gave her a skeptical, confused look, she said, “Phone, please.” 

Lance’s eyes widened, and she simply looked at him expectantly until he reluctantly gave it up. She tossed it carelessly into a drawer, and then locked it. She exited from behind the desk and led him, touching the small of his back, into a smaller examination room. 

“Okay, drop your pants.” 

—

After a very uncomfortable clothing examination where the woman made sure he wasn’t trying to ‘sneak in contraband’.Lance was sat down as the woman took his shoes - apparently they’re not allowed to have laces - and gave him a pair of flimsy plastic sandals. 

The nurse began leading him around. “These are day rooms. They’re where you’ll spend your day, except for meal times, and you’ll be with a group in there.” She said, gesturing around. She tried to lead him down a hallway, but he planted his feet. 

“What is that?” Lance asked, pointing to a line of what looked like scotch tape lined along the floor and up across the desk. 

The nurse drew in a breath of annoyance and said hastily, “That’s the divider between boys and girls. You are not to interact with girls.” 

Lance allowed himself an eye roll, but let himself be brought down the hallway this time. There were doors leading into narrow, yet large rooms with two or three beds each. There was another person in blue scrubs sitting in a chair at the entrance to someone’s room. At the end of the hall, the woman stopped and gestured into the room. 

“You’ll be staying here. You’re the bed closest to the window. If you have any questions, Coran is on night patrol. Goodnight.” 

The woman left, not shutting the door behind her, which Lance assumed was standard practice. Lance tiptoed over the sleeping figure of someone, their features impossible to make out in the darkness of the room, and carefully sat down on his bed. 

It was the opposite of comfortable. The sheets were fine, if thin, but the real problems lay in the mattress and pillow. The pillow was like a sheet of paper, not doing anything to support his neck and head. And Lance already hated the mattress, it was cheap and probably plastic by the way it squeaked and whined under his weight. 

There were chalkboards above the headboards of the beds, and Lance saw something written in a different alphabet on the one above his roommate’s bed. Lance spotted chalk on the dresser he assumed they shared, since it was placed directly between the two beds, but didn’t feel like writing anything on the chalkboard yet, since it would probably wake up his roommate. 

Instead, he tried to become comfortable by squirming into a sleep-like position on the plastic mattress, laying on his stomach. Said body part growled lowly, and Lance remembered that he hadn’t eaten all day at the hospital. He felt really proud of himself. 

Lance fell asleep to dreams of skinny legs and dainty wrists. 

—

Lance was awoken a few hours later by a sharp knocking sound. His eyes immediately shot open, surprised by the sound, because his mamá never woke him up like that, and it was usually his alarm’s job anyways. 

A voice, cheery with a British accent, informed that he had ten minutes to get up, but Lance rolled back and forth in his bed for a good five before sitting up. 

It all came back at once, the fainting, the medical hospital, and now this place. What was it called again? Lance couldn’t remember. 

The Cuban boy jumped out of his bed, plastering a smile onto his face. His roommate, whom he had yet to meet, was already awake and in a tank top and sweatpants. Lance looked down at himself, realized that he was still in plastic patient clothes from the other hospital, and felt a pang of embarrassment. 

“Hey, are we allowed to have… clothes?” Lance asked his roommate hesitantly, glancing at him. 

His roommate turned around, and Lance felt his heart speed up: whether it was the dude’s beautiful face, or the fact that Lance hadn’t eaten in a good thirty-six hours, he didn’t know. He had dark black hair, falling into his eyes but also down his neck to stop above his shoulders, pale skin, and eyes that looked violet. Lance had never seen eyes like that before.

Then Lance noticed he was also being stared at. 

“Have you never been to one of these places before? Of course we’re allowed clothes, not everyone wants to walk around naked,” the roommate scoffed, and while his voice was low and smooth, Lance still felt miffed at the tone. 

“As a matter of fact, no, I have not been to one before!” He retorted, crossing his arms defensively. 

The guy just snorted, “Whatever. Good luck.” 

Lance rolled his eyes as his roommate exited through the door, and followed him out after a second. He couldn’t just stand in his empty room forever. 

He walked down the hallway, seeing other people congregating near the front desk, which seemed to be some sort of center area. There was a cart with some baskets, and Lance saw people grabbing them and sitting in chairs lining the hallways, or going back to their rooms with the baskets. 

Since he had absolutely no clue as to what was going on, and his roommate hadn’t been much help in figuring anything out, Lance walked up to the first person he saw, who happened to be a lady in dark blue scrubs. She had dyed white hair tied up in a bun and dark skin that made her bright blue eyes pop. 

“Excuse me,” Lance said softly, walking up to her, “what am I supposed to be doing?” 

“Ah! You must be Lance, right? You’re our new arrival!” When she spoke, Lance realized this must be the person who had woken him up, judging by the same cheery attitude and British accent, “Well, right now people are showering. You take your toiletries from your assigned basket, and then you and your roommate each take a turn using your room’s shower. After you’re finished, return your basket to the cart and go to your day room!” 

“Right. Okay,” Lance said, still a bit confused but backing away all the same. He didn’t want to admit that he was still lost on how the place worked. 

He just walked over to the cart, and eventually found a basket with his name written across the front in erasable marker. He took it gently and walked back to his room. 

Inside, the shower seemed to already be running, nudging by the locked door to the bathroom and general shower noises. Lance sat on the bed and looked through his basket. 

A plastic comb, three small packets of shampoo and conditioner each, and two fresh towels. Lance glanced around to see if he missed anything else, but no. He’d have to ask if his mother could bring over his skincare items. 

The sound of the water hitting the ground winded to a stop, and a minute later, Lance’s roommate walked out, his hair mostly damp but already wearing his clothes. 

Lance shrugged and entered the bathroom. 

—

After his shower, putting his hospital outfit back on, and towel drying his hair, Lance wandered down his hall among a few others near the main desk. There were only two rooms on this side of the tape, one with younger boys in it, and one that seemed to match his age. Lance took his chances and entered the one for older-looking people. 

He opened the door and walked in right as a person in dark blue scrubs was taking attendance- the same woman who had told him about the baskets earlier. She had her nametag on at the moment, so Lance learned that her name was Allura. He also learned that he was probably in the right place, because she didn’t give him an odd stare or redirect him. 

“Keith,” She called out, and Lance sat down and watched his roommate - now known as Keith - answer the woman’s call with a simple ‘here’. 

“Rolo!” The guy seated closest to Lance called out a ‘present’. He had sandy dark blonde hair and a seedy appearance. 

“Pidge,” the woman made eye contact with someone in the room who was waving his hand, a smaller-looking dude with oversized glasses and freckles. 

Allura went through some other names, but Lance had officially tuned out, instead studying the room. 

There was five or six other dudes in the room besides Lance, and the youngest-looking seemed to be the Pidge person from earlier, though he looked only fifteen or so, meaning most of the people in the room were probably around the same age as Lance. 

The walls were either glass - only the ones facing out towards the front desk were glass, but the glass seemed thick enough to withstand a nuclear war - or painted a cream color. Boring, in Lance’s opinion. There were posters, most of them childish and meant to be ‘inspirational’, but all of them just serving to be condescending. A TV resided in a corner, turned off for role call presumably, but it looked nice enough. 

The tables were square and blockish, with only two of them in the room, although they were large enough to take up a lot of space. Where there wasn’t a table, there were chairs, large enough for Lance to curl up completely, yet still uncomfortable on his bony backside. 

A piece of paper was placed in front of him, and Lance stopped his observations to glance up at Allura. She took a seat next to him, and Lance realized that everybody around him was chatting and filling out papers. 

Allura reached towards the center of the table and grabbed a short, stubby, eraserless pencil. She handed it to Lance and explained, “Every morning we fill our sheets about how we feel. We make a couple of goals, rate our emotions, and try to evaluate if we’re dangerous to ourselves or others. Can you do that?” 

Usually, this would be the moment when Lance would say ‘anything for you, Princess’ and wink. Although she was very, very beautiful, Lance couldn’t bring himself to flirt with Allura. It felt like a grade schooler trying to flirt with their teacher… just awkward, embarrassing and weird. So instead, Lance just moved the pencil against paper, Allura intently watching his hands movements. 

When he was done, Allura simply raised her left eyebrow, and asked, “You’re feeling happy, normal, and fine, and your goals are to leave?” 

Lance looked away from Allura’s penetrating gaze, not willing to give her a verbal reaction. 

“How about we try to focus on short term goals, like ‘I want to get to know the others in my day group’, or ‘I want to be truthful with the Doctor about why I’m here’? Being released is a long ways off for you.” 

Lance felt his cheeks burning with irritation. A few moments passed, then Lance passive aggressively scribbled out his previous answers and wrote down the bullshit Allura was telling him. He knew before even arriving here that he would be stuck in this place for a while, but that didn’t make the reality of it any less harsh. 

“Good job, Lance,” Allura praised, very clearly ignoring the anger in her patient’s movements. She collected his paper, and then the others’, neatly stuffing them in one of the folders on her desk. As she did, one of the other guys got up and approached Lance. 

Lance saw the person approaching out of the corner of his eye, but refused to acknowledge them until he plopped down in the empty chair that had previously been occupied by Allura. Lance turned his head slightly and caught the searching eyes of Pidge, the short, young-looking dude. 

“Hey,” he said shortly, and his voice was higher than expected, “I’m Pidge. Keith tells me you’re completely new.” 

Great, so his roommate was gossiping about him already. Lance voiced as much. 

“Nah, I asked him about you. So, to get it out of the way, I’m fifteen, I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, commonly known as OCD, and I’ve been here about a month and a half. Second stay.” Pidge spit out the information all at once, churning it out on reflex as if naming a favorite color or fun fact. 

Lance nodded, “Is there anything else I should know?” 

“Yeah, I happen to be transgender.” 

Oh. “Cool. So like, just to be clear-“ 

“She/her pronouns, dude. Just use those, and calling me Pidge or Katie is fine. I’m only in the dudes’ day room because this place only cares about birth sex,” Pidge explained casually, biting her nail. 

“Okay. Sorry.” Lance said, probably sounding a bit short, but he wasn’t mad at Pidge. 

“Don’t be sorry. You’re way more accepting than Rolo over there.” Pidge gestured over to Rolo with a shake of her head, and the blond dude glanced over with a scrunched nose. 

“Is he a transphobic asshole?” Lance asked quietly, trying to not stir up trouble but also curious as hell. This place seemed to operate on completely different social cues than anything Lance was used to. 

Pidge nodded, “He’s aggressively Christian and uses his faith as a way to be a dick.” 

“Those types of people…” Lance rethought what he was going to say, realizing that if Rolo strained his ears just right, he could probably hear anything Lance said, “are not my favorite people.” 

Pidge grinned at Lance, and Lance took in her appearance for the first time. She had short hair, but it was fluffy and curled around her ears in a cute way, framing her pale skin that was covered in an obscene amount of freckles. She was pretty short, and all around tiny, probably around five-foot-three if Lance had to guess. Lance envied how weightless she looked, curled up in the chair. 

She was wearing a leafy green tank top, knee-length cargo shorts, socks, and a pair of floppy hospital sandals. Her glasses looked even more oversized up close, and behind them Lance saw she had amber eyes. 

Lance’s immediate thoughts were that she’d make for some good thinspo while he was stuck here. 

“So what’s your story, Lance?” Pidge poked at him, stopping just short of actually touching his skin, “I can already guess some details, but humor me anyways.” 

Lance frowned at the mention of how he ended up here. “Well, I guess I had been dieting for a while when one day I passed out on the street. Which, in my defense, it was a hot day and I very well could have passed out because of that. My buddy called an ambulance, I got taken to the hospital, and apparently I’m ‘underweight’ and ‘have a severe eating disorder’. It’s all bullshit. A guy passes out one time and suddenly he’s in this place.” 

Lance made sure to use air quotes when deemed appropriate. 

Pidge looked him over. “You’ll never get released with that attitude.” 

“Well, I’d say I have a minimum of three months to work on it,” Lance said bitingly, then added on, “sorry if I seem unfriendly. Usually I’m not like this, I’m just… irritated.” 

“Who wouldn’t be? You clearly don’t want to be here,” Pidge observed, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. 

Lance shrugged, “And you do?” 

“The only way to get better is to accept that you need help in the first place,” Pidge said cryptically, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. When Lance glanced down at it, he noticed it was stretched out. 

Lance decided to change the subject to something less bothersome, and asked, “Can you tell me about all of the people here?” 

Pidge nodded, a sly grin making an appearance. “Sure. I’ve got the details on everyone here, but I’ll just give you a summary.” 

Pidge jabbed her thumb in the direction of the sandy-haired guy from earlier, Rolo. “That’s Rolo. I don’t know the last name, but his first name is weird enough on its own. He’s got anger issues, high key. He’s here on a court order for a minimum of six months, four of which he has fulfilled. He’ll probably be here longer, though, because he is not good at telling the doctors what they want to hear.” 

Lance nodded. 

“The guy in the corner - don’t worry, he just doesn’t talk to people because he’ll start rambling - is Slav. He’s got OCD like me, and although I’m severe, he’s on a whole different level. He’s been here for two years.” 

Before Pidge could move on, Lance interrupted, “He’s been here two whole years?!” 

Pidge nodded her confirmation, “At this point he might never be released. He can’t really function that well, just from an objective standpoint.” 

“Okay, continue,” Lance prodded, trying not to let the idea of being here for two years freak him out too much. 

“Okay,” Pidge jerked her head towards a tan guy with long, long white hair, the same shade as Allura’s, “that’s Lotor. He has bipolar disorder, and he’s a dick. The two are not related facts - his BD doesn’t make him a dick, he does that all on his own. In my opinion, he’s manipulative, but that’s going a bit too deep for an introduction. He’s been here one month.” 

“And there’s Keith.” Pidge nodded towards Lance’s roommate, as if Lance didn’t already know, “I’ll tell you that he’s been here for eight months, and it’s his fourth time in an inpatient facility, but he would impale me on a spork if I told you anything else.” 

Lance raised an eyebrow at her, then glanced over to Keith. Lance flinched a little when his gaze was met with a violet-eyed glare. 

‘What did I ever do to him?’ 

Lance looked back over to Pidge, but she was grinning coyly in Keith’s direction. When he returned his gaze to Keith, he realized the dude’s chair was now empty. Lance nearly jumped five feet in the air with a small ‘eep’ when a notebook was dropped onto the table on the side of him that Pidge wasn’t already occupying. 

Keith settled into the previously empty chair, still trying to kill Pidge with just a look. 

“Uh, should I… go?” Lance suggested, his head bouncing back and forth, looking at the two. Pidge shook her head in disagreement. 

“No, Lance. Stay,” she demanded. It wasn’t a request, it was definitely a command. Lance felt a little miffed, his emotions were running high, but stayed out regardless. 

“What did she tell you about me?” Keith suddenly growled, not breaking eye contact with Pidge. 

Lance’s eyes glanced down to the notebook that apparently belonged to Keith. “Nothing much, she just told me how long you’d been here and how many times you’d been inpatient.” He meant to sound firm and detached, but the statement came out sounding like a question. 

“Good.” Keith picked up his notebook and one of the stubby pencils, opening the book and beginning to write. 

Lance gaped at Keith. He was going to be rude to him when he woke up, glare at him from across the room, be overall not a friendly dude and then expect Lance to be all buddy buddy with him? 

“I don’t expect to be friends with you. I’m just here because Pidge is here,” Keith said, almost reading Lance’s mind, which was crazy because Lance was positive he hadn’t accidentally said anything out loud. 

Pidge hummed, then pulled out a cheap office folder. She opened it up, sifted through an ungodly amount of really tough looking mind games, like crosswords and sudoku, and pulled out a word search. With a small hum of happiness, she meticulously began solving it. 

Lance felt bewildered. Less than a week ago, his life was normal. He was on his way to being beautiful and skinny and wonderful. He was almost there, and then one slip up cost him everything. He should have taken the safe route and rode the bus home that day, and he wouldn’t be in this mess. 

Part of him was angry at Hunk, for calling that ambulance in the first place. If Lance’s friend had been truly thinking of his best interests, he wouldn’t have stopped Lance from reaching his goals when the Cuban was so, so close. 

Another part was angry at his mamá. She was the one who signed off on the papers to have him put into this hospital, to put him into recovery. She could have refused, couldn’t she have? She could have taken him home and pretended nothing had ever happened. 

But really, he knew he had no one to blame but himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow look I updated lmao 
> 
> update on a different note: I love the support this is getting from others who have had similar experiences to my own struggle (ana’s a whole ass BITCH). Thanks for the love! Y’all are beautiful humans. 
> 
> about Pidge’s gender: I know in canon she’s a cis girl (she hasn’t been confirmed nb but I would love that) who simply masqueraded as a guy to bypass garrison suspicion, but I wanted Pidge to be trans in this. I thought about making her nb, or a trans boy who Haven respected and put in the boys’ room, but I felt like her being a trans girl having to deal with Haven being assholes was most representative of my own experiences with LGBT+ support in mental health. plus in one of the hospitals I stayed at, they had LITERAL SCOTCH TAPE separating “boys” and “girls”. like that’s problematic in so many ways lol fuck that place. so that’s where the scotch tape that lance sees comes from. 
> 
> if you’ve ever been to inpatient (long term preferably but any experience is helpful!) and want to let me know personal experiences (and wacky hijinks) so that I can make this story more accurate, contact me on my tumblr! @spacefilledeyes!!! it’s pretty empty right now but it’ll get filled up eventually. 
> 
> god these notes are so long im sorry im a disgrace


	3. i will help you to control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance settles in a bit more at Haven. Keith’s a Little Bitch, but Sanda is a Big One, Lance can tell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i got pestered (good way not bad way) to update so I did. just letting y’all know that I am NOT a frequent updater, but I would tell y’all if I was going to abandon this work. I’m not planning on it.

Lance lasted maybe half an hour before cracking. He knew Pidge was probably his best bet, and she seemed willing enough to talk with him earlier, so he tried again. The chattering in the background of the other patients made him feel more willing to speak up. 

“Hey, Pidge?” Lance asked suddenly, and Pidge jumped minisculely, setting down her short, ugly-looking pencil and focusing on Lance’s face instead of her crossword puzzle. 

“Yes, Lance?” 

“What do we… do here?” He asked, an embarrassed flush coating his cheeks, but continuing eye contact with Pidge. 

Pidge’s impassive concentration face splintered into a small smile, “You really are a newbie, huh?” 

“Well, excuse me for being able to evade being sent to a—“ Lance started spluttering, and Pidge burst into giggles. Lance saw her eyes crinkle at the corners and squeeze shut, betraying how young she really was. Fifteen really is young to be well-versed in hospital knowledge. 

“It’s okay, Lance, I’ll help you,” Pidge finally got out after her spell of laughter, “just tell me what you need to know.” 

“Start with a schedule of this place, maybe?” Lance asked, sheepish. He felt pretty dumb but he was completely clueless, and he would rather learn now than later how inpatient works. 

Pidge nodded, and rifled through her office folded from earlier, shuffling endless amounts of papers, most of them brain teasers like sudoku and word search. After a few moments, she asked, “Keith, I can’t find my welcome papers, can I borrow yours?” 

Keith reached across the table to a folder identical to Pidge’s except for a few doodles and started searching, clearly not feeling very talkative. Whether that was a Keith thing or a Lance Is Here thing, time will tell. Seconds later, a few papers and packets were thrusted across the tabletop to Pidge. 

“Thanks,” Pidge muttered, and shuffled the sheets around before plucking one in particular and showing it to Lance. 

“This is the schedule for each week. Everything is divided by sex, so heteros don’t have much fun here,” Pidge narrowed her eyes at Lance and continued, “you’re not a hetero, are you?” 

“I’m personally offended,” Lance sniffed, but he was used to people calling him straight. He didn’t blast his bisexuality from the rooftops. 

“Interesting. Anyways, nurses start waking us up at 6:00am. Morning showers are from 6:00am to 6:30am. You need to be in your “day room”— the room you’re in right now— by 7:00am. That’s when we do our evals. Evals is short for evaluations, basically when we circle stuff on paper and write down goals. You still with me?” 

“Uh-huh,” Lance mumbled. 

“Technically, evals takes ten minutes tops. Sometimes nurses make us share with everyone what we wrote down, but after the papers are collected, it’s free time until 8:00am, when we go to breakfast.” 

Lance’s heart hammered a little faster at the idea of food, being forced to eat in front of everyone, strangers. It got even faster at the idea of not knowing how many calories there was in everything, and not being able to exercise or fast. 

“I can tell you’re panicking a bit, Lance, but there’s more,” Pidge added, an edge of sympathy to her voice. 

Lance croaked, “Go on.” 

“Since you’re an anorexia patient, your intake will be heavily monitored. At every meal you’ll be watched and noted on how much you got down. They can’t force feed you, but I’m imagining being watched alone—“ 

“Pidge, cut it out! Can’t you tell he’s freaking out?” 

Lance heard their voices but he wasn’t fully there. His body was still planted in that uncomfortable hospital chair, but his mind was weaving together worst-case scenarios and allowing Lance to dive right in. 

You’re going to gain so much weight. You’re going to be so fat. Rolls and rolls of flabby skin, pounds everywhere, none of your clothes will fit. It’s going to be back to square one with restricting, this is a waste of time, a horrible thing, you have to get out get out get out get out get out…

“Lance?” 

Lance snapped back into reality, and stared at the person who had spoken, Keith. The teen was staring back at him with concern, not the heartwarming kind, but the kind of concern Lance supposed people had for each other when they’re stuck in a mental hospital. “Are you okay?” 

Lance smiled, easy and warm and fake, “Of course, sorry! It just now hit me that I won’t be able to use my phone anymore.” 

Pidge whistled, “You’re a good liar, pretty boy.” 

Usually, a girl calling Lance pretty boy would make him blush and probably flirt badly at her, but considering the circumstances, Lance wasn’t really in the mood. “It’s in the job description.” 

Keith’s face was now free of any and all emotion, back to a neutral scowl. “Glad to know,” he said bitingly. 

Lance let his eyebrow raise at the tone, once again wondering how the hell Keith already disliked him. 

Pidge seemed to ignore Keith’s attitude and continued her ‘Mental Hospital 101’ class. “Moving on from breakfast, at 9:00am we have recreational therapy— usually referred to as simply Rec— where we usually do crafts and stuff you’d find at a suburban play date. 10:30am, we have snack and free time, usually where we all just watch Spongebob or whatever cartoon is on T.V. That’s also when the phones are open to use. Then, at 11:00am, we have group therapy; it’s exactly what the name suggests and it’s always either very awkward or very insightful.” 

“And always very dumb,” Keith muttered, and Pidge frowned at him. 

“12:30pm is lunch, and 1:00pm is when the staff says they’ll take us outside. They don’t always make good on their promises.” 

Lance crossed his arms, “So we don’t even go outside every day? Do they even know how bad that’s going to be for my tan?” 

Keith snorted, and Lance turned to him defensively, asking, “What’s your problem?!” 

“Nothing, I just find it funny that you’re so image-obsessed that it landed you here,” Keith responded rudely, grimacing at Lance. 

“I didn’t even do anything to you, so I don’t get why you hate me so much, but whatever. I don’t want to lose my tan because to me it’s a symbol of my heritage, gabacho,” Lance scowled, insulting the guy in Spanish. Keith looked clearly confused, but Pidge snickered into her hand. 

“It means “white boy” in Spanish,” Pidge explained when Keith looked at her expectantly, “but the word has connotations of ignorance.” 

“Hey, I’m not ignorant!” Keith cried, probably a bit too loud, but no one was paying much attention. 

Lance looked him up and down deliberately and drawled, “We’ll see about that.” 

Keith frowned grumpily. For the rest of Pidge’s speech, Lance felt a floaty feeling of petty victory. 

—

Breakfast was… difficult, to put it simply. Lance started sweating when Allura (who was the morning nurse most days, according to Pidge) called for everyone to line up outside the day room. Lance tried to wipe his palms on his thighs, but the slippery, almost plasticky feeling of the scrubs he had yet to change out of did little to help. 

Pidge stood next to him and shot him a comforting yet concerned smile, accompanied by a thumbs up. Keith had the decency to not mock Lance’s obvious discomfort, but scoffed and looked away. Lance tried not to beat himself up too much for making an enemy of his roommate on his first day. 

Allura faltered when she got to Lance as she listed off names, making sure no one got left behind or managed to sneak away. This place really was like a prison. Allura gestured to allow the others in Lance’s day room to walk to the cafeteria, but hung back and called softly, “Lance?” 

Lance felt his heart sink and speed up simultaneously, but fell back to give himself some privacy. 

“Hey, Lance,” Allura smiled softly, but Lance just stared at her blankly, so she swallowed and pushed on, “I don’t know if you already knew, but because you’re here for anorexia nervosa, we have to monitor your intake. We have an eating disorder specialist, but she only comes in once a week and usually focuses on the girls’ unit, so most of the time, I’ll be the one overseeing your progress. I will watch over things like your food intake or lack thereof, weight, hydration, and your exercise.” 

Lance felt his arms erupt in goosebumps, but managed to nod his understanding. Allura seemed to approve, but stopped him just as they reached the cafeteria doors, “We can’t force you to eat, but we won’t be able to release you until you’ve recovered enough to not be dangerous to yourself, so please try, okay?” 

Lance swallowed hard and pushed the doors to the cafeteria open. 

His fellow day group members were all already seated with their meals, and the line to get food was completely empty. Lance saw that it was in a potluck-style self-serve kind of thing, which meant he could pick and choose what he wanted. At the beginning of the lineup was a fast food style drink dispenser, and Lance filled his cup with the slightly cold water. 

Next was the trays and plates, and Lance reluctantly took one, moving forward to look at his options. He knew that sitting in the cafeteria for the next half hour with an empty plate, obviously not eating, wasn’t a great idea, so he evaluated his options. 

There was a large platter full of salad, or what was trying to impersonate salad, at least. It was lettuce, occasional small cherry tomatoes, and tiny shreds of carrots. Lance filled half of his plate with it, trying to remember calories. 

Lettuce, 7 calories per cup. 

Tomatoes, 10 calories per cherry tomato? Can’t remember… 

Lance felt frustrated tears pushing at the corners of his eyes as he tried to remember calories and numbers, but forced them back. It all would have been so much easier if he had his journal— for the last year Lance had recorded almost everything he had eaten, even binges, in the lined pages within. As far as he knew, it was still sitting on his desk at home, innocent in the eyes of his family. 

After the salad were club sandwiches. As far as Lance could tell, they consisted of turkey, maybe ham, lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, and bread. They were small, about the size of the average fist, so Lance took one hesitantly. He couldn’t handle moving on to any other options, so he just walked over to the table Pidge and Keith were at. 

As he walked, he noticed multiple people staring at him, looking away, and then turning their eyes back when they thought he wouldn’t notice. 

It’s because you’ve got so much food on your plate, they think you’re a fatass, Ana’s voice explained, and Lance felt himself shrink. 

“Hey,” Lance groaned dejectedly as he set his tray down. Pidge and Keith both looked at Lance’s tray, but Lance couldn’t figure out what they were thinking. He glanced at their own meals, and felt himself physically recoil. 

“Scared of a little pasta?” Keith asked mockingly, and Lance saw Pidge glare at her friend disapprovingly. 

Lance rolled his eyes, “I’m not scared, just wondering how you put that garbage in your body and manage to stay under the obesity cutoff.” 

Keith opened his mouth to retort, then thought better of it. “Whatever.” 

Lance opened up the single sandwich he had and picked it apart, setting aside the meat and tearing off parts of the bread that weren’t necessary. Then, he set the remaining club aside, grabbed a fork and began to stab at lettuce, shoving it into his mouth. 

As he chewed, he counted slowly up to thirty, then swallowed. 

“I have to say, I’ve never met an anorexic before today,” Pidge admitted, eating their own spaghetti with gusto. 

Lance shrugged and replied, “You probably have, you just didn’t know it.” 

Pidge raised an eyebrow, “What do you mean?” 

“I know I’m not skinny myself, but not many anorexic people I know actually become thinspo. Most enter recovery, or go on months-long binge cycles that make them gain like crazy. Besides, some people’s metabolism is hard to work with. So it’s easy to assume you’ve met people with EDs, you just couldn’t tell.” 

“Really?” 

“No, Pidge, I’m feeding you bullshit about a community I obviously am very well-versed in. Yes, really,” Lance snorted, shoveling his second bite in and repeating the process. 

Keith snorted. 

“Well, I may not be the most knowledgeable about people with eating disorders, but I am pretty knowledgeable in hospital know-how, and I can tell you right now that Miss Allura is not giving you a good note in her lunch papers.” Pidge said, slightly tilting her head in Allura’s direction. 

“What do you mean?” Lance asked curiously, swallowing his third bite. 

“It means that Allura is writing down how you’re barely eating anything, that’s what it means,” Keith answered bluntly. 

Lance sighed and dropped his head, letting it hang low, “I don’t want to be stuck here forever, but I can’t just recover! I’m not ready yet.” 

“You can’t have both, dude,” Pidge deadpanned. Lance flopped back in his chair dramatically. 

“Well, until I can, I will not eat like some unrestrained— I will not eat,” Lance resolved, “at least not until I can figure out what’s in everything.” 

—

A few hours after breakfast was the morning phone calls. Pidge said that usually unless someone’s waiting urgently for one of the phones, they let patients go over the ten minute limit on calls, so Lance made sure he wasn’t going ahead of anyone then dialed his mom’s number. 

It rang three times before she picked up. “Hello?”

Her voice was tinny through the phone, and Lance felt like crying at just the sound of her accent.

“Hey, mamá. It’s me, Lance.” 

“Ay, Lancito! ¿Como estás? ¿Que pasó?” His mother asked briskly. 

<“Oh, Lance! How are you? What happened?”>

“Nada mucho, mamá. Me enviaron al hospital anoche,” Lance replied. He saw a nurse giving him the stink eye in the corner of his vision, so he switched to English, “the people here say you can bring me clothes and things.” 

<“Nothing much, mom. They brought me to the hospital last night,”>

“¿Qué quieres?” Lance’s mamá asked, and he heard rustling through the phone. 

“Please bring multiple pairs of sweatpants, and some of my sweatshirts, and socks? And as much of my skincare stuff as they’ll let you,” Lance listed, thinking hard, before an idea popped into his head. He felt a bit bad that he was potentially deceiving (read: definitely deceiving) his mamá, but it was for the best. 

“And my journal, the plain blue one on my desk. I want to be able to write, the nurses here say it’s a good coping skill,” Lance added, trying to sound casual. He prayed to whatever god there was that his mamá would not look through the journal and neither would the staff. 

“Por supuesto, mijo,” Lance’s mamá agreed, and Lance felt that stab of guilt. 

“Thank you. I love you,” Lance said, still feeling uncomfortable speaking Spanish with the nearby nurse around. 

“Te quiero mucho!” 

Lance allowed her to hang up the phone and reentered the dayroom. Pidge waved at him and he approached her and Keith, who seemed annoyed that Lance was hanging around him all the time now. 

Well, the feeling was mutual. 

“Hey,” Lance greeted, plonking into one of the chairs that only got more uncomfortable as the hours passed. Pidge nodded. “What’s next?” 

“Group therapy, a.k.a. the Oversharing Hour,” Pidge grunted, trying to talk to Lance and focus on her wordsearch at the same time. 

“The worst hour,” Keith muttered. 

“He only says that because he would rather fuck a cactus that share his feelings,” Pidge teased, and Keith turned red. Lance couldn’t tell if it was in anger, embarrassment, or something else that was equally negative. 

Lance eyed Pidge’s papers and asked, “Where did you get all of those from?” 

“Ask Allura for a folder, and then go to that corner,” Keith replied for Pidge, waving generally at a mess of papers ‘stacked’ on a small desk. 

“Oh. Okay.” 

Lance hesitated at talking to Allura again, because all of his past interactions with her had been awkward and weird, at least from Lance’s point of view, but he steeled himself and walked up to her anyways. 

“Uh, can I get a folder? Keith said you could give me one?” Lance asked quietly. He wasn’t sure why he was whispering, and no one was even glancing at him, but he still felt opposed to speaking too loud, like people would stare. 

Allura smiled at him encouragingly, “Of course!” She bent and dug around her desk before pulling out a boring office folder, exactly like Keith and Pidge’s folders. Lance accepted it as it was offered to him and wandered over to the corner Keith had pointed out earlier.

The stack, which was more of a disordered pile, was full of stuff like crosswords, sudoku, and word-searches, a ton of self care articles, exercises, and lists, and coloring pictures. Lance just grabbed everything he saw.

—

“Hello! For those of you who don’t know me, I am Miss Sanda, a therapist here at Haven Recovery Center. I see we have some new faces, so let’s all go around the circle and introduce ourselves, okay?”

Miss Sanda was old, and Lance could tell it was taking way more willpower than it should for her to be acting this nice. Still, he complied, and listened to everyone say the names he already knew and added his own when it was his turn. The tables had been pushed as far out of the way as possible, and the chairs organized into a misshapen circle. 

“Great! Now today we will be focusing on coping skills. You’re all in here because you resorted to unhealthy coping mechanisms, and we want to fix that so that you won’t end up in here again once you are released,” Miss Sanda said, and Lance raised his eyebrow to himself at her condescending tone. “Why don’t we start with you?” 

Lance looked up and realized she was referencing Rolo, the guy that Pidge had called transphobic earlier that morning. 

“I don’t really have bad coping skills. I was just making sure my girlfriend wouldn’t ever forget to clean the apartment again, and apparently that’s illegal now. I don’t have anything to cope with, not like some other weirdos in here,” Rolo claimed, grinning in a sleazy manner. 

“I doubt you would be here if you didn’t have anything to work on, Rolo,” Miss Sanda said, mispronouncing his name. 

“Well, you’re wrong.” 

Miss Sanda cleared her throat, obviously displeased, and gestured to Slav. “How about you go next?” 

“I don’t really believe that is a good idea, Miss Sanda. In .2% of realities where I discuss my coping skills openly during this group session, I am killed within a week! In order to ensure the greatest possibility of survival for everyone in this room I will decline and remain silent.” 

There was a sigh, and Miss Sanda’s eye twitched in annoyance. “Why don’t we go around in a circle, then, and each of us will name a coping skill?” She gestured with her chin to the guy sitting closest to her: Lotor. 

“I like to work when I’m overly stressed or emotional, it helps me be productive and focus on something,” Lotor explained, his voice prim. 

“That’s a good example, Lotor!” Miss Sanda complimented, mispronouncing his name as well. 

Pidge was sitting next to Lotor, a fact Lance was sure she wasn’t exactly pleased with, but nonetheless, she contributed, “I like mind puzzles, like riddles and stuff.” 

“Fantastic,” Miss Sanda encouraged, but Lance could hear her enthusiasm draining away the longer she pushed the therapy forward. 

Lance felt eyes on him and realized it was his turn. “I— uh—“ His first instinct was to say that he exercised, and then he realized that Miss Sanda might write it down and the people at this place definitely wouldn’t think that exercising was a good coping skill for him. 

“I hang out with my friends,” Lance finished quietly, after a way-too-long period of silence wherein he tried to think of something appropriate to say. 

Keith, who was grumpily brooding on Lance’s other side, answered immediately once the attention was shifted onto him, “I write.” 

“That’s a good skill,” Miss Sanda said emptily. Keith didn’t seem to even take notice.

Silence, awkward and thick, filled the circle as all of the patients waited for Miss Sanda to notice that everyone in the room had gone. Eventually, she snapped out of whatever wonderland she was in, and said, “Oh! It seems that we’ve completed that exercise. Why don’t we all move back to the tables— not yet! Wait until I’m done instructing you— and write on a piece of scrap paper five new coping skills you want to try out when you’re released.” 

Everyone was already scraping the chairs along the outdated wood flooring back to their original placements around the tables. Lance, Pidge, and Keith, who were already becoming known as a trio by the other patients, huddled together at the end of one table by the only window in the room. 

Lance finessed a piece of lined paper from Pidge and tried to think. He stared aggressively at the empty white rows, trying his damned hardest to name anything he wanted to try that could classify as “coping”. Eventually, he wrote two: guitar and singing. 

After that, he was at a bit of a loss, so he randomly wrote down three other things: reading, yoga, and meditation. 

He ignored the voice in his head, Ana’s voice, reminding him that his first priority once he got out of there was to lose all of the disgusting weight he was bound to have gained. 

Lance shoved the piece of paper into his newly-acquired folder and snapped it shut. Keith glanced up and asked, “What’s up with you?” 

Lance felt a surge of annoyance— fuck Keith and his snooty attitude. He wasn’t any better than Lance, in fact, he was probably worse! Didn’t Pidge say that he had been hospitalized like six times?! 

“None of your business, Mullet. But I guess I’m just a teensy bit upset that I was put here against my will and now multiple people are acting like I’m doing something wrong and that I’ll never be released!” Lance snapped, but took care not to raise his voice and draw Miss Sanda’s attention. 

“Right,” Keith drawled. “So you’re throwing a fit.” 

Lance sagged, “Ugh!” 

—

“I can help you, you know.” 

Lance allowed his tray to plonk onto the table Keith and Pidge had chosen, same one as breakfast. He leveled Keith with a raised eyebrow, “How so?” 

“You’re here for anorexia, and I’m not, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to trick people into thinking you’ve gotten better,” Keith said. 

“Trick people?” Lance asked, now interested. 

Keith frowned and looked down at his own lap. “Yeah. Look— I wouldn’t recommend it, but I’ll tell you what to do. You’d probably figure it out on your own anyway. Just remember this: if you don’t get help and recover when it’s offered to you, right now, you might not get that chance again.” 

Pidge looked at Keith, concerned, then over to Lance, explaining, “We’ve both known people with anorexia before. One of them, a guy named James, he got discharged two months ago because he was amazing at lying. He gave Keith his number before he left, and they called everyday for months. Then, the calls just stopped. By the next week, the line had been… disconnected.”

Lance looked at Keith, who avoided his gaze. 

“I didn’t know him, because our stays didn’t overlap, but Keith did. They were pretty close. Keith is positive he wouldn’t have just disconnected his phone, so he must be dead.” 

Lance shook himself to get rid of the goosebumps on his arms. “Can you tell me what he did?” 

Keith glanced up at him, and then at their trays. Keith had the watery white rice heaped on, with cups of different vegetables, and a burger. Lance had one vegetable cup and a small portion of rice. 

“Sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: *writes a cliffhanger intended to capture my audience* 
> 
> also me: how dare I end my chapters like that I must immediately start the next one and spend the next couple months procrastinating on it


	4. the angel that i couldn’t kill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance gets just a bit more comfortable at his new “home”, but it’s clear he still has a lot to learn. From doctors to patients, Lance can’t seem to understand anyone around here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: Breaks in the story have been indicated by — in between paragraphs. From this point onwards, that remains the same, and ... in between paragraphs indicates a change between present day and a flashback. 
> 
> I write with italics, but ao3 almost always removes them, so it’s harder to tell when I go into a flashback. 
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER (IMPORTANT!!): 
> 
> In this chapter, I go into more detail than previously about anorexic tendencies, views/thoughts/opinions, and methods of weight loss. While it may not be active promotion, some characters concerned do not view themselves as sick and embrace their disorders. This is unhealthy, and I don’t support eating disorders. This is simply used to portray their mental states and their disorders as accurately as possible. If you think you have disordered eating, disordered thoughts, or disordered actions, please take steps to get help. You’re loved. Your weight doesn’t effect that statement. You deserve recovery.

Lance tried not to let his feet drag too much as he returned his hygiene bucket to the front area. He didn’t have many options, so all he had done was comb through his hair before giving up. No one usually showered in the evenings, either.

The plonk of the basket must have alerted someone to his presence, because a voice he didn’t recognize immediately called, “Lance!” 

Lance turned hesitantly. The sight that met him was a blonde nurse in the same scrubs Allura had been. Said woman had left around three, when her shift had ended. 

“I’m Romelle,” the nurse introduced herself, “and I often work nights and afternoons here. You are Lance, right? Just let me know if you’re not!” 

The nurse was so peppy. Lance felt himself getting drained just talking to her. “Yeah, I’m Lance.” He ground out. 

Romelle clapped excitedly. Lance resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Wonderful! Your mom dropped off so many things for you earlier, and they’ve been searched and they’re ready for you to take!” 

Immediately, Lance was on alert. “Really? What did she bring? Did you guys take any of it?” 

“I can’t name everything she brought, there was so much! You’ll just have to see for yourself. And there was one thing they said you couldn’t have, but everything else was good to go.” 

Lance’s heartbeat sped up rapidly as he asked, “What was that thing?” 

“Hm, I think it was a perfume or cologne of some sort? We don’t let you guys have them. Something about unverified liquids and not wanting any congested smells,” Romelle explained with a dismissive wave. Lance breathed out in relief, but the anxious feeling wasn’t quite gone. 

Miss Romelle finally reached the desk and rummaged around. After a few seconds, she emerged with four large brown bags filled to the brim. “Here you go, mister!” 

Lance had a bit of trouble getting all the bags down the hall to his room, but he managed, barely. Keith’s judgmental gaze was fixed on him the second the bags were dumped against Lance’s cubbies. 

Lance and Keith’s room only had five pieces of furniture in it, excluding the chalkboards. Two of them were the shitty hospital beds, and one was a bedside dresser level with the beds. There wasn’t a lamp or anything on the top of it, it was just bare. 

The last two pieces of furniture were tall, wooden, cubed organizers. They were sort-of shelves, sectioned into squares and against the opposite wall, facing the beds. The two were identical in structure, three boxes per row and five rows. Keith’s had some clothes, his folder, a few paperback books, and his journal. 

Lance started going through the bags of his own things. Apparently whoever had checked his items was a bitch, because they threw his stuff into the bags haphazardly, unfolded. 

Altogether, Lance’s mamá had brought three pairs of sweatpants; one was black, one was green-and-grey plaid, and one was grey with “AHS SWIM TEAM” emblazoned on the left leg. There were a few tank tops and t-shirts of assorted origin— summer camps, school, vacations, bands—and a couple of sweatshirts. There were six different pairs of socks, half of them fuzzy. 

An entire bag was stuffed full of Lance’s self care items. His morning face wash, night face wash, morning moisturizer, nighttime moisturizer, pore strips, rose water toner, clay mask bottles, his exfoliator, sugar scrubs, lip balms, personalized shampoo and conditioner, and under-eye masks were all there. Lance could have kissed each bottle if Keith wasn’t watching. 

“What the actual fuck,” Keith whispered under his breath. Lance ignored him. 

His makeup was there, too. Foundation and concealer, powder, highlighter, bronzer, and three of his cleanest beauty blenders. No brushes, which could be a problem, but Lance would cross that bridge when he got to it. 

At the bottom of the last bag was a small, unassuming blue book. Lance felt a sting of relief in the corners of his eyes and willed himself not to cry. 

“Thank god,” Lance near-moaned. 

“Are you done yet?” Keith asked bitingly. 

Lance arranged all of his makeup and skin care onto one row of his cubbies, his tops onto another, and his pants onto a final one. “Yes,” he finally responded. 

“Great. Now go to sleep,” Keith bit out. Lance pouted as Keith flipped the lights off and collapsed into bed. 

“What about your offer?” Lance probed, “I want your help.” 

Keith rolled over so that Lance couldn’t see his face. The Cuban boy rolled his eyes in exasperation. 

“We can talk about it tomorrow, Lance. Let me sleep.” 

Lance frowned dramatically but kept silent, allowing them both to eventually drop off into unconsciousness. 

—

Keith woke up easily about fifteen minutes before the first rounds. There was early-morning light shining through the blinds, pale and slotted but still there. He shifted into a curled ball, wincing at the squeaking of his hospital mattress. The aggravating noise had no trouble filling the otherwise-silent room. 

He watched himself move his fingers slowly. His fingernails were long. He didn’t have a nail trimmer or even a nail file. His hands were paler than they already naturally were, because no one really got much sunlight at Haven. 

After he got used to the movement of his fingers, Keith moved on to hands, then arms. He didn’t want to move too much, so he settled for just gripping his torso firmly enough to physically remind himself of its presence. Keith wiggled his toes, rolled his ankles, and did the same for his legs as he did for his torso. 

A few feet away, Lance— Keith’s newest roommate— slept like a log. He had anorexia, same as… 

James. 

The name itself made Keith’s stomach ache. It was real, physical pain, the kind that made you want to rip out your intestines as they slowly but surely stabbed your insides. 

Keith watched Lance breathe in and out silently sleeping, and felt his eyes unfocus. He allowed himself to slip into the memory. 

… 

“Keith, I’m getting out of here soon. I can feel it,” James grinned wolfishly, flipping away the hair in his face. 

Keith smiled indulgently as he continued scribbling into his journal, although the pace slowed as conversation began. “Oh really? Didn’t you say that last week? And the week before that? And—“ 

James thrust his hands into Keith’s face, waving wildly to silence him, as he laughed. The two took care not to touch each other and break hospital protocol. 

“I’m serious, this time. Doctor Shirogane says that if I continue as I am, I can be released before the end of the month!” 

Keith felt his smile fade slightly. He cocked his head and whispered, “But you’re faking. You’re not actually better, right?”

“Well, yeah. I haven’t reached my goal yet. Once I reach 105 pounds, I’m just going to maintain my weight, but I’m not there yet, so I have to keep restricting. While I’m still in this place, I can’t,” James whispered back nonchalantly, flipping through his folder. 

“Isn’t that… dangerous? And how are you managing to fool an entire hospital staff?” Keith stopped writing completely and set down his pencil. He turned to face his friend, who was still looking completely unconcerned. 

James shrugged. “It’s not dangerous at all. I know what I’m doing, Keith. And it’s a lot of things. As long as I don’t use one method too much, no one notices— not even you.” 

Keith frowned. “Of course I notice…” 

“No you don’t.” James had the audacity to laugh, “I haven’t eaten anything in a day and a half and you haven’t said a word.” 

Keith’s mouth twisted unpleasantly. He wanted to trust that James was in control; after all, he didn’t really know anything about anorexia. But the ugly feeling of unease wouldn’t leave his chest the entire day. 

… 

Rapping of knuckles against the open door forced Keith into the present day. He quickly stood up and changed out of his nightclothes into a fresh outfit. Black shirt, black pants, black socks and a red-and-black flannel to spice things up. He was already on his way out the door to grab his toiletries by the time Lance was groaning and sitting up in bed. 

Why had he made that offer yesterday at dinner? He was so stupid. Even if he didn’t want to see Lance ever again, taking away his chances of recovery seemed a little extreme. 

Then, Keith thought of Lance’s rare laughter, Lance’s desperation to get out of Haven, and all he could see was James. 

… 

Keith struggled to contain his laughter as James mocked a nurse right behind her back. Whenever the nurse would turn around, James would immediately turn back into a model patient, and it was hilarious to watch her face get steadily redder. 

“How are you so good at this?” Keith asked, on the brink of wheezing. 

James flashed him a grin. “Acting. It comes in the job description.”

Keith rolled his eyes. At Haven, your disorder became a part of your personality. Everyone was going to know all about it anyways, so no one had any reason to hide it. 

Still, James was right. He was an incredibly good actor, especially when it came to his eating disorder. After he had first mentioned Keith not noticing his tricks, he had taken special attention to watching James eat, and he had realized things. 

James would sometimes take a bite, chew, seemingly swallow, and then wipe his mouth. When Keith glanced at the napkins, there would be chewed-up food spit onto them.

“James, are you spitting out your food?” Keith whispered quietly across the table, trying not to glance at the disgusting mush. 

James lifted a napkin to his mouth, subtly spit, and winked. Keith felt a little sick. He didn’t know if it was the sheer dedication James had to a deadly disease, or the sight of chewed food. 

Back in their room, James had some containers of play-dough. After dinner, he would always rummage around in them before going to the bathroom. Upon investigation (asking James), Keith learned that he had snuck in laxatives by burying them into the dough and saying the play-dough was to stop panic attacks. He had prepared the containers prior to being hospitalized in case he ever landed in a place like Haven. A friend of his brought them when he asked. 

“How the hell did you manage that one?” Keith asked, morbidly impressed as one would be with a severely mutilated body. 

James smiled proudly. “I knew that one day, I might get tossed in one of these hellholes. So I decided to have a plan.” 

Keith looked at the containers: when the top layer of dough was peeled off, he could see the countless pills embedded into the remainder. “I meant, how did it get past the nurses?” 

“Easy. They pry off the top lid, it looks like play-dough. They’re not gonna pull the entire piece out, they’re too lazy— plus, play-dough gets everywhere. And if they shake the containers, the pills don’t rattle because they’re buried in the play-dough.” James explained easily, like he was breaking down an algebra problem. 

He would sometimes get a fruit cup, eat the fruit, and then shove as much “unhealthy” food as he could into the cup to hide it and make it look eaten. 

“Isn’t Miss Allura going to notice you shoving spaghetti into your fruit cup?” Keith asked, spooning his own into his mouth. 

“Nope,” James said gleefully, “The nurses usually only check your plate at the beginning and end of every meal, to see how much you got down. If I eat the fruit and replace it with spaghetti, she’ll think I ate the caloric pasta and not the healthy fruit, which makes a difference.” 

“Huh,” Keith said. 

Very rarely and always very stealthily, James would dump food into potted plants or other semi-hidden areas. It was usually blamed on the girls’ unit. 

“This is getting ridiculous. There’s no way you won’t get caught for that! Don’t they have cameras in this place?” Keith whined as James swiped half of his meal into a nearby fern. 

“Actually, that’s a good point. Usually, they think a rexie on the girls’ unit did it, but I don’t know why they haven’t called me out if they saw this on the cameras?” James paused and thought for a bit. “Maybe the security guards just really, really suck.” 

Keith snorted into his Spanish rice. 

After a bit of pressuring, James would work out quietly in their room while Keith stood guard. Whenever someone came to check on them, Keith would warn James and he would stop until they were gone again. 

That one actually made Keith uncomfortable at first, because he was nervous they would be caught. However, James’ gratefulness and the sense of camaraderie between the two of them soon washed that away. 

“You’re the best, Keith,” James panted as Mr. Coran walked away from their room, oblivious, “Thank you so much for letting me exercise.” 

Keith awkwardly smiled back, knowing his cheeks were probably on fire. “No problem.” 

Leading up to his discharge, James was taken off of bathroom observation, so he started purging when he could (all the time.) 

“Okay, I actually know that making yourself throw up ruins your teeth forever.” Keith stated, arms crossed and mouth set into a deep frown. 

James wiped his mouth as conspicuously as he could. “Dude, don’t blow my cover. It’s not that bad. Haven’s the one holding me here against my will.” 

And that's the thing, wasn't it? Keith understood the bitterness that came with involuntary hospitalization, so he let James do what he wanted. 

… 

Keith stumbled suddenly, and his hip hit a wall. He barely came back to reality enough to catch himself. 

“Watch it, faggot,” Rolo hissed, an aggressive snarl on his face. 

“Rolo, we’ve discussed derogatory terms before. Come on, with me now, hurry along,” Coran chastised, herding Rolo away from Keith. He just shrugged and grabbed his toiletries, heading back to the room. 

Somehow, Lance had woken himself up, because Keith walked in to the sight of him changing. 

He looked like death. 

Shrunken was probably a good term, as well. Lance was facing the window, so the first thing Keith saw was the spine. Lance was bent over, and the ribbed length protruded out and away from the tight, dry-looking skin. Even from the back, Keith could see the smallness of his frame, the unhealthy size of Lance’s thighs. 

Lance turned at the sound of Keith’s footsteps and jumped to cover himself, as he was only wearing boxers. “Hey, dude! Don’t look!” 

Keith tore his gaze away, but not before glancing at Lance’s countable ribs and easily visible hip bones. He twitched a little at the sight. 

“Don’t laugh, man. Just forget you saw me without clothes on, okay? I know I’m gross, but—“ Lance began rambling and retreated into the bathroom, but Keith couldn’t really pay any attention. 

… 

“I can count your ribs,” Keith commented absentmindedly, watching James. The other patient was examining himself in the bathroom mirror, standing just outside the bathroom door to see as much of himself as possible. As a result, Keith could see, too. 

James turned to his roommate, a grin adorning his features. “Thanks.” 

Keith bit back the urge to say that he hadn’t meant it as a compliment. 

“You know,” James started, “when I came in here, I was ten pounds from my ultimate goal weight. But they won’t let me see my weight during my check-ins here, so I don’t know if that’s changed.” 

Keith nodded, an obligatory acknowledgement, but James continued, “I can’t wait to be out of here. This Friday, Keith! My parents are coming to pick me up and then I’m free!” 

A pang of dread hit Keith as he imagined hospital life without James, who was pretty much the only other patient he interacted with regularly. Still, he forced a small smile and said, “Congrats. I’ll miss you.” 

James pulled on a shirt— finally— and sat on his own bed, facing Keith. He offered, “We could call. I could give you my number.” 

Keith tried to remain neutral, but he knew that his relief was shining through. James gave a chuckle and held out a hand for Keith’s journal. He handed it over without complaint. 

A few moments later, it was returned to him with some digits on the inside of the front cover. “Ta-da!” James said jokingly. 

Keith allowed himself a smile. “When do you want me to call?” 

James flopped backwards onto the bed. It made an outrageous whining noise of complaint. They both ignored it. “How about during afternoon call? I’m usually free around then.” 

Keith nodded. At that moment, Miss Romelle popped in to check on the two of them, so the matter was put to rest. 

—

Keith managed to shower first and booked it to the day room when he was done. He and Pidge weren’t roommates, and with Lance around, they didn’t get much time to speak purely between themselves, not that they really needed it often. 

Pidge was waiting in the day room, which was otherwise deserted. She didn’t have a roommate and none of the other patients liked being in the day room earlier than necessary, so they had about as much privacy as they could get. 

“What the fuck, Keith.” 

Keith winced at Pidge’s tone. The small girl was tapping her foot expectantly, her arms crossed, a fire in her eyes. “It just came out, okay?!” 

“What part? The part where you’ve been a complete asshole to Lance, or where you offered to teach him how to keep slowly killing himself?” Pidge asked condescendingly. She stepped closer, her voice lowering. “I know that what happened with James fucked you up, but you can’t just— can’t just—“ 

Keith stomped his foot petulantly, becoming defensive. “I can’t handle getting close to someone else with a ticking time bomb of a disease!” 

“Oh, so this is all about you now, huh? Who cares if Lance doesn’t get the help he needs, poor Keith doesn’t want to watch someone die?” Pidge snarled right up in her friend’s space, “With your childhood, I thought you of all people would be used to it.” 

Keith reared back as if slapped. Pidge seemed to realize what she just said, and reached out to him hesitantly, face apologetic. “Keith—“ 

Keith’s face twisted with ugly emotions as he turned and walked away from Pidge, who just stood in the now-empty room, watching him go. 

—

Lance only made it to the day room after everyone else was already there. Miss Allura took note of his presence as he walked in and sat next to Pidge. 

“Hey,” Lance whispered, trying not to disturb the early-morning atmosphere. He glanced around. “Where’s Keith?” 

Pidge snapped her pencil clean in half. Miss Allura immediately hurried over and swept away the ruined tool while neither of them spoke. When the nurse was gone, Lance turned with wide, confused eyes. 

“He’s spending the morning in the quiet room,” Pidge said robotically. 

Lance watched her grab a new pencil and begin harshly filling out a crossword. “What’s the quiet room? Is it like a punishment?” 

“No. It’s like solitary confinement, except patients have to want to go in there and a nurse has to be with them the entire time. Usually people go when they’re crying or upset,” Pidge bit out, looking especially angry. Lance felt even more confused from her explanation. 

“But he wasn’t crying this morning at all. He seemed just as broody as yesterday—“ Lance began, but was cut off. 

“Drop it, Lance!” Pidge snapped, her voice sharp. Lance immediately shut his mouth, feeling hurt and bewildered. 

He didn’t want to risk making Pidge more upset— maybe she should be the one in the quiet room— so he simply plopped his journal onto the desk and opened it back up. He swiped through the pages. 

Most of the pages just had daily “logs” in them: records of what he ate, how much he exercised, and how much he slept that day. Sometimes, pages were dedicated to thinspo; they would be filled with paragraphs Lance had written meant to inspire him to keep going. 

One such page talked about how, if Lance reached his goal weight, he could look good in crop tops and revealing clothes. Lance skimmed the familiar words. 

The paranoia of having something he wasn’t supposed to was already kicking in. Lance felt the constant urge to glance over his shoulder at Miss Allura, but for the most sake, he suppressed it. He also found himself hunching over the pages as he looked at them, trying to block them from view with his body. 

That probably wasn’t going to work. He’d need to find some way to make it seem like he actually was using the journal to cope, or something similar that wouldn’t get it taken away. He tried to brainstorm ideas, but his brain felt fried. Where was Mulletman when you needed him?! 

It almost made him sag with relief, but he kept his composure. Even if he didn’t have exact calories, it would be so much easier to continue his diet with his journal entries as a guideline. Throughout the years, he had written so many different calorie intakes and foods that he now had knowledge about what was in everything he would be eating. 

He started a new entry, more of a diary entry than a food log: 

Hi, I guess. It’s me, Lance. I got put in a hospital— it’s called Heaven or something. They want me to recover, but I don’t really think I’m sick enough to need it yet, you know? I’m not even at my goal weight yet. 

I managed to get this journal in here. I’m glad I thought of it. I can look back in here to see some estimations of calories for foods I’m eating here. Pretty smart, huh? I’m pretty lucky I’ve been logging my intake for so long.

I can’t do much exercise in here, and it looks like that’s how it’s gonna be from now on. A nurse is always monitoring how much I eat, too, which is pretty annoying. I don’t know how to get them off my back. Keith said he would help, but he’s not here today. Pidge says he’s spending the day alone. Figures. 

I’ve never been in a hospital like this before. I don’t really know how to keep losing weight when everywhere I go, people are trying to make sure I do the opposite. I wish they couldn’t keep me here against my will, but you can’t always win. I just want to leave and restart my regular life. 

Lance wrote down the date of the entry and snapped the book closed. Pidge still wasn’t talking to him, but they had thirty minutes still until lunch, so he didn’t really know what to do with himself. Spongebob was playing on the T.V., and half of the room’s residents were watching, enraptured, by the entertainment. 

That is, until the nurse from the front desk came in and rapped on the door. 

“Is there a Lance M. in here?” She asked blankly. 

Lance felt panic bubbling up. What was she here for? Did he do something wrong? Did they find out about the notebook and want to take it away and throw him into a jail cell for the rest of eternity— 

“Yes, he’s right here,” Allura said politely, making pointed eye contact with Lance. He shakily stood up. 

The nurse focused her gaze on him and led him out of the day room. She took him down a hall that he hadn’t been shown during his late night tour, which only served to make him more anxious. Eventually, he found the courage to ask, “Where are we going?” 

If the nurse— Lance didn’t recognize her at all— took notice of his timid tone, she didn’t show it. “This is the office corridor.” 

Lance looked around. There weren’t open rooms showing off bedrooms, or day rooms, or even supply closets. Instead, each door was spaced out generously and had a small plaque on them, printed with a name on top. 

“But why are you taking me here?” Lance tried again. 

The nurse sighed, obviously annoyed. She only replied once she stopped them at a closed door at the end of the hallway. “Doctor Shirogane wants to see you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve never been hospitalized for an eating disorder, but I’ve been hospitalized for mental health issues before (take literally one guess). 
> 
> I know that some places specialize in eating disorders and operate differently, but I’m going off of a) my own knowledge, b) my friends’ experiences, and c) other random shit. 
> 
> I’ll try to make it as accurate as possible. 
> 
> HEY HEY HEY YOU. If you have an eating disorder, REACH OUT! I know it’s hard, trust me I know, but it’s worth it. Even if you’re not ready to reach out to an adult/professional, please talk to someone you trust, or even me! You can always hmu at my tumblr (spacefilledeyes) or comment here. Someone will always care. You are never alone.


End file.
